The blades of ceiling fans accumulate dust and dirt particles rather quickly and frequent cleaning is required. Failure to clean the blades results in poor fan performance. Moreover, the rotating blades distribute dust and dirt throughout the room until cleaned.
Some inventors have developed blade cleaning brushes that clean the blades while the blades are in their operative position. These devices require the individual performing the cleaning chore to reach up with the blade cleaning device, align it with the free end of the blade, and oscillate the device along the extent of the blade being cleaned. This tires the individual's arm, neck and shoulder muscles. Perhaps even more importantly, such cleaning may simply transfer dirt from the blades to the floor below the fan.
Accordingly, some inventors have developed fan blades that can be folded downwardly to facilitate their cleaning. An example of such devices is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,776,761 to Diaz. Additional fans having foldable blades are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,728,768 to O'Conner, U.S. Pat. No. 1,361,785 to Tucker, and U.S. Pat. No. 474,141 to Morton.
All of these earlier articulated fan blades share a common limitation: they either have utility only in connection with a particular fan design or they are limited to a single direction of rotation. Since fan designs differ, there is a need for a more universal foldable fan blade construction. For example, fan constructions include two major categories, i.e., top-mounted blades and bottom-mounted blades. These types relate to the position of the blades relative to the motor housing. More particularly, most motor housings are generally disc-shaped and lie in a horizontal plane. Most of the designs of the prior art have utility in connection with bottom-mounted blades, but no utility in top-mounted designs because the motor housing interferes with the downwardly folded blades. The only known top-mounted foldable fan (Diaz) can rotate in one direction only because reverse rotation causes its blades to fold downwardly.
The prior art, taken as a whole, neither teaches nor suggests to one of ordinary skill in this art how a fan blade could be provided that would be foldable downwardly even in a top-mounted design.
There is also a need for fan blades that detach from their mounting brackets to facilitate their cleaning. However, the art appears to be devoid of any teachings or suggestions of detachable fan blades.
Finally, there is a need for an improved device having specific utility in connection with the cleaning of fan blades of the type that are foldable, but the prior art also appears to be devoid of any such cleaning devices.